Yahoo prepping YouTube competitor for summer launch: report

We’ve been hearing about Yahoo’s YouTube competitor for some time now, but there’s no concrete evidence of such a service being launched anytime soon.

However, a new report by AdAge, claims that Yahoo could launch the video service this summer and further strengthen its portfolio to compete with rivals Google, Vimeo and other video services.

Yahoo has been known to be in the market for a video streaming service, and had its attempt to purchase DailyMotion blocked last year. The company has been in the process of revamping many of its services and has shown a keen interest in the mobile space, launching revamped news, weather and Flickr apps.  

The report mentions that Yahoo had earlier planned to launch the service in April, but the project was held back due to contract issues. Yahoo is reportedly ‘ramping up talks’ with video producers and content creators and the report mentions that Yahoo plans ‘more generous’ revenue-sharing deals and fixed ad rates higher than what YouTube offers.

Yahoo’s video service appears to be in line with YouTube. Content creators can create their channel pages and host their videos on Yahoo. It will also allow its video player links to be embedded in other sites.

Yahoo has been on an acquisition spree ever since Marissa Mayer took hold of the reins. She has often said that she would like to increase Yahoo’s presence in the video segment. The company has bought Tumblr, Android launcher app Aviate and other companies since last year.

Besides Yahoo’s video service, here seems to be yet another video service in the pipeline, to compete with YouTube. Recent reports claim that YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is also likely to launch rival video-sharing site. Early competition forced Chad Hurley and YouTube’s other co-founders to sell the video sharing service to Google. And Hurley, who left Google in 2010, has hinted that he is ready to launch a potential new rival.